Sometimes one size doesn’t fit all

A design engineering student who I know well, recently posted his dilemma on Facebook.

He was challenged to analyse several design schematics and report upon how best to improve documentation and reconstruct an original from the drawings. The problem was that some of the drawings were very old and contained imperial measurements, whilst newer documents contained metric measurements. Having being written at different times they also embodied varied contextual language.

A key element is to really understand the requirements before beginning. Conversion of all imperial measurements into metric was an early stage of the solution. Once a single language is in place, the overall mechanism can easily be reconstructed from the plans. An easy solution for an Engineer, you might think.

As a former Engineer, I related his challenge to business management and found a similar model. Really understanding the business strategy, goals and requirements is paramount. Knowing its recovery processes for every business area, ensuring all have similar format and actually connect together follows. Although each process and its risks are identified and recorded by different people, they must work together if the business is to withstand any disruptive incident. All recording, reporting and incident handling must abide by company format, industry regulations and relevant laws.

As with an orchestra, a conductor brings together all of the plans and ensures a common format and purpose. The resultant solution is a business continuity management system, which provides both resilience and recovery from which would otherwise be damaging events.

pic: foot and a meter!

It’s just good business sense…

Give me a call, or complete the form below, I’ll ask a couple of questions and offer some thoughts, we can then decide the next steps.